Something seemed odd about the crew of a Chinese fishing boat spotted off the coast of South America in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Instead of rubber boots and waterproof gear stained with fish blood, the men wore loafers, sandals, and hiking and running shoes. They were dressed in jeans, striped shorts and comfortable slacks.

The men — six Chinese citizens and one Colombian — told the U.S. Coast Guard on Nov. 24, 2016, that they were hunting for schools of tuna. But their ship, the Yue Shan Wei Yu, had a more valuable catch in its hold, federal prosecutors say: a ton of Colombian cocaine worth $67 million that was bound for Hong Kong.

Feisheng Liang, the ship's captain, and Kanhua Wu, the engineer, are accused of attempting to transport 42 bales of Colombian cocaine about 9,000 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean — a voyage of at least two months.

The other five defendants have pleaded guilty in the case and await sentencing.

Coast Guard witnesses told jurors that, based on their appearance and clothing, the defendants clearly were not fishermen. Those details and others emerged Tuesday during the second day of trial in Sherman, about an hour's drive north of Dallas in the Eastern District of Texas.

Demand for cocaine in Asia has exploded, experts say. And evidence from the Sherman trial illustrates the unprecedented risks Chinese smugglers apparently have taken to get the product to market.

Several Coast Guard officers testified Tuesday that they had been surprised to see a vessel flying the Chinese flag in the eastern Pacific near the Galapagos Islands — an area controlled by Latin American cartels.

Typically, the South American drug organizations use those waters to shuttle cocaine in boats to ports in Mexico. From there, vehicles smuggle the drug across the border into the United States.

The Coast Guard cutter Hamilton spotted the Chinese ship during a routine patrol. The next day, a Coast Guard team boarded the deteriorating 120-foot cargo ship and took control after obtaining permission from China, prosecutors say.

Farmer Miguel Mangos processed coca leaves to make cocaine base paste last September at a clandestine farm next to the Inirida River in Colombia.

(File Photo/Agence France-Presse)

The Coast Guard sank the ship about a week later, when the engines and power generator failed after a series of explosions. Before that, the ship's batteries sparked and smoldered near fuel-soaked flooring, the steering faltered, and the exhaust system broke, sending black smoke billowing into the engine room, according to testimony.

Rust had eaten through some of the bulkheads and scarred the ship's hull and insides. Other hazards included an electrical panel open to the elements and a grease-covered stove, Coast Guard witnesses said.

"It was probably the worst conditions I've ever seen," said David Johnson, a Coast Guard maritime enforcement officer. "I was surprised at how far they'd come."

Marked with a crown

Liang's attorney, Matthew D. Hamilton, has portrayed his client as a simple fisherman. But a video obtained from the captain's mobile phone showed a circle of Asian men and women handling large piles of Chinese currency and feeding it into a money-counting machine.

Prosecutors Jay R. Combs and Christopher Eason played the brief clip Tuesday for the jury.

They also showed jurors Coast Guard photos of what they said was Wu leaning out of the Yue's hull while hacking at a tangled rope with a meat cleaver — in an attempt to free a load of cocaine bales.

The crew, upon spotting a Coast Guard helicopter, had begun tossing the bales into the sea from an open hatch when ropes connecting the packages got caught on the side of the ship.

Liang is seen in the photographs standing behind Wu, overseeing the effort to free the bales, according to the prosecutors.

The Coast Guard recovered 42 bales of cocaine that had been tossed overboard on Thanksgiving Day in 2016, Coast Guard witnesses said.

Jurors on Tuesday got to see samples of that recovered cocaine. The rectangular bales, each weighing about 40 pounds, consisted of cocaine stuffed inside black waterproof bags with tape wrapped around them.

Written on the tape were sequential numbers and a drawing of a crown — the unique signature of a particular drug gang. Each bale was worth $1.6 million, prosecutors said. Six GPS tracking devices inside watertight plastic cases were affixed to buoys that floated with the cocaine packages.

Ecuadorian authorities seize a load of cocaine headed for the Galapagos Islands, a major transit point for drug traffickers.

Although there was no evidence of commercial fishing aboard the Yue Shan Wei Yu, its crew was adept at catching squid at night for food, according to testimony from Coast Guard witnesses.

The crew attracted squid to the surface by shining lights into the water and then scooped them up with a long-handled net, according to the Coast Guard witnesses.

Hamilton, Liang's attorney, said the government couldn't show the jury any commercial fishing equipment on board the Yue Shan Wei Yu because the Coast Guard sank the vessel.

Small fish big fish

Robert Nedeau, a veteran Drug Enforcement Administration agent, testified that records from the recovered tracking devices showed investigators the exact location in Colombia where they had been turned on.

It was in or near a school with an adjacent soccer field, he said.

About 2 tons of cocaine, including the load seized from the Yue, was linked to the same drug organization, Nedeau said.

The other ton was intercepted aboard boats headed for the U.S., he said.